I’m going a little off the topic of the Rangers here, but they’re here, just in a round-about way.

One of the most interesting and fun aspects of being a part of the family here at Ranger Report is that I’m one of only a handful of females, or “blogettes,” if you will. It leads to some unique exchanges at times. Yet, I’ve never felt disparaged because of my gender and, in fact, I’ve always felt welcome here. That has not always been the case, whether in an on-line forum/blog like this or in person at a bar or any gathering.

I’ve been a sports fan for most of life and the reactions I’ve gotten have ranged from puzzled to insulting to welcoming. Those are just from the various guys I’ve encountered and known over the years, which is what I want to focus on. And for the record, this is NOT going to be a post where I bash guys; I just want to talk about my experiences as a female, self-proclaimed sports nut.

When I was younger, I was just a baseball fan (the Mets in particular) and for the most part, the reactions I got were of the ‘awww, how adorable’ kind. At the time, those comments never bothered me, but then when I got to high school, I became a Rangers and hockey fan. That was when I started really getting into the games, learning stats and which players were on various teams and becoming more knowledgeable about both hockey and baseball. By my college years, I was a full-fledged sports nut and could keep up a conversation about anything sports related.

That was when the more “interesting” comments began cropping up. There has never been anything particularly negative said towards me when I mention that I’m a sports fan. More of the surprised reaction is what I get, especially when I start arguing with a fellow fan about why the trap was bad for hockey or why Player X is not a good fit for the team. It’s after those types of conversations that I would get a negative reaction and I attribute that to the fact the guy in question was hurt that he lost a sports argument with a girl.

It’s the other reactions that I get that both annoy and surprise me. Those are of the ‘you only like sports because of the guy’s look/bodies’ or, in other words, the accusation that I’m just a pink hat fan.

Nothing could be farther from the truth in my case. And I suspect in the case of the other “blogettes” here. We are sports fans because we love the sports themselves. We love seeing a breath-taking combination of passes on the PP that results in a goal, we love to see the tough guys on a team get into a scrap, we love to see the punishing open field hit on a receiver, we love to see the simple beauty of a well-turned double play. We can talk sports with the guys just for the sake of talking sports with the guys. Because we actually know the sports and can recite the stats and argue about line combinations. We LIKE doing these things whether they are in a bar, in our own living room or on a blog such as this.

And if we happen to mention out loud or notice that a certain player is good looking? Well, we’re still red-blooded females, and not dead, and we’re not going to ignore that just because we are sports fans first and foremost. I consider that an extra perk of being a female sports fan and one that I do not plan on giving up anytime soon :)